In the first of a series of interviews with leading libertarians, Dr
Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance
(his email), discusses what
libertarianism means to him. Dr Gabb is also author of around fifteen
books (some novels, some poetry, others political) and has contributed
to Lewrockwell.com and Vdare. The topics discussed in this interview
include English reactionism and the ancient philosopher, Epicurus.

Keir Martland: Dr Gabb, thank you for agreeing to take part in this
interview. Would you like to begin by saying how you arrived at
libertarianism and what you mean by it?

Sean Gabb: To say that political opinions, or opinions about anything,
are genetically determined would be absurd. However, I do believe that
people are born with general dispositions that incline them to adopt
certain opinions—or, when the range of known opinions is limited,
to adapt certain opinions to their own nature. I think that is how it
was with me. From my earliest childhood, I have never wanted to
control others or to be controlled. I was brought up in a strongly
Conservative family. That obviously influenced me. But I always found
myself moving to the more liberal shades of conservatism. Also, I
rejected socialism partly because it was The Other, but also because
it struck me as a justification for control and even tyranny.

My epiphany came when I was thirteen. In one week, I read George
Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and the The Scarlet Pimpernel. The
first gave me chapter and verse reason for hating socialism. The
second sharpened my appreciation for the traditional and generally
liberal order of Old England. I became a committed Tory.

My second moment came when I was seventeen, and I read J.S. Mill's On
Liberty. I know the book is flawed in all manner of ways, but I read
it at one sitting, looking up every so often to tell myself that this
was what I had always believed. Before then, one of my A Levels was in
English History in the 19th Century, and I'd found myself repeatedly
thinking well of the free traders and liberals whom my History teacher
tended to scorn. I was prepared, till I read Mill, to think that old
liberalism had been a good idea in its day. I came away from Mill a
pretty convinced libertarian.

From here, it was a quick jump to Macaulay and Burke. Long before I
had heard of Rand and Rothbard—long before I had met Chris Tame and
joined his Libertarian Alliance, I was a Believer.

Now, as to what I mean by libertarianism, I take a fairly liberal
view. For me, a libertarian is someone who: want to be left alone; who
wants to leave others alone; and who wants others to be left alone.
There are many paths by which you come to this position, and many
justifications for it, and there are many claimed derogations from it.
I do not, therefore, take part in the mutual denunciations of some
libertarian groupings—anarchists v minarchists, natural rightists v
utilitarians, social conservatives v libertines, believers in limited
liability capitalism v mutualists, etc, etc. I have my own opinions on
all these matters and others beside. I only reject someone as a fellow
libertarian if it is reasonably plain that he isn't sincere in his
claim, but that he is only using arguments about liberty to gain
allies in some other cause that is his main agenda. For this reason, I
was dubious as a young man about the more convinced Cold War hawks,
and nowadays despise the neo-conservatives who talk about liberal
values, but are more interested in conquering and reordering countries
that might sort of work if left alone.

Keir Martland: This is always an interesting question to ask as every
answer is totally different. It's particularly interesting that you
say that your family was a strongly Conservative one. In what way do
you mean that your family is/was Conservative?

Sean Gabb: When I say my family was strongly conservative, I mean that
its members believed in the traditional institutions of this country,
and Britain's special status in the past and present, and who were
very suspicious of those developments—immigration, permissivism,
and so forth—that seemed likely to change the country from what it
had been or from what they wanted it to be. When I came out as a
libertarian, I claimed no longer to accept many of these opinions and
attitudes. Of course, I never did wholly reject them, and they have
continued to exist in an unstable synthesis with my libertarianism.

Keir Martland: And what is it about tradition that made you a
libertarian? Would you say that tradition is actually something over
which the state has little control?

Sean Gabb: I won't talk about tradition in general. However, the
traditional order of England is the raw material from which the whole
libertarian tradition has been refined. This is an order of limited
government and respect of the individual—of freedom of thought and
speech, and due process of law, and respect for private property, and
of general equality before the law. If I were a Russian libertarian, I
might have to begin by rejecting my entire national history and
culture. Because I am an Englishman, I can be a traditionalist—even
a reactionary—as well as a libertarian. Indeed, I can be one
because I am the other.

As to the rule of the State in the creation or maintenance of
tradition—yes, there is some control. The authorities in even a
very liberal country have much influence over what people believe and
how they act. At the same time, they are themselves influenced and
constrained by these traditions. For example, England became
Protestant because Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I chose, for
varying reasons, to withdraw the country from communion with Rome. It
is possible that, but for Henry's failed divorce, England would have
remained as Catholic as France. However, once the Reformation had run
its course, the English State was forced to accept the new order of
things. Charles I and James II were deposed partly because they had
despotic ambitions, but also because they tried to alter the
settlement of Church and State.

Keir Martland: On that basis then, English libertarians can quite
consistently be 'reactionaries'? Would you say that the ability to be
reactionary is unique to English libertarians or would you be able to
include other nationalities? For many, the term will conjure up the
image of 'far-right' statists—to what extent is this association
incorrect?

Sean Gabb: Yes, English libertarians can consistently be reactionaries—though
we need to be selective in our reaction. I don't think we
would wish to repeal the Married Women's Property Acts, or bar a
defendant from having counsel for his defence in a trial for felony,
or bring back impressments of seamen for the Navy. But we can take
pride in our nation and its achievements, and hope that a more
libertarian future can be inspired by and connected with our
libertarian past. As for whether other peoples can do the same, I
cannot really say. I am certainly dubious about the American worship
of their Constitution and revolutionary origins. The colonies were
settled by the more totalitarian Protestant dissenters. The last witch
mania in the English world took place in America. The Revolution
itself may have been inspired by the English legal judgement that
outlawed slavery. The Constitution legitimises the slave trade and
takes account of slavery to give additional power to the slave states.
American jurisprudence on slavery is a disgrace. Apartheid was the
established order in much of America until my own lifetime. America is
the country that banned beer and started the War on Drugs. Political
correctness can be seen as much a secularised American Protestantism
as something made up by German Jewish lefties. America is a country
where freedom existed for so long as there was a frontier and for so
long as there was some fading impress of English ways. As for other
countries, I don't see much of a libertarian tradition. English is the
great and wondrous exception. We are, in some measure, the Chosen
People when it comes to the development on free institutions and
scientific and industrial civilisation.

Keir Martland: Would you like to see a return of power to the monarchy
and a shift of emphasis away from democracy? Lysander Spooner in 'No
Treason' made the point, excellent for its sheer simplicity, that just
because a slave has choice over his next master doesn't mean that he
is in any way free or that he has made any contract.

Sean Gabb: You are asking if I would like to undo the constitutional
developments of the past three hundred years. The answer is no. I
might like to wind them back to about 1910, when the Constitution was
internally balanced. But that does not seem a likely thing to expect
or to work for.

I accept that Parliament is filled with scoundrels and traitors, and
that they are put there by a thoroughly corrupt system of election.
But, while I have the greatest respect for Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and
might accept that his proposals will be good for other peoples, I
still absolutely believe in a limited constitution, where a monarch
and his advisers balance and are balanced by representative
institutions chosen by those of the people who can be trusted with the
vote.

How to decide who should be trusted with the vote is a question I
can't easily answer. The middle class electorates of the Victorian
golden age cannot be brought back. Freeholders or tenants of good
income are as likely to be state functionaries or clients as
independent professionals and entrepreneurs. The whole moral and
intellectual tone of society is different. I sometimes hope for a
military coup and a Caesaristic dictatorship, which will sort out our
present mess. But the question is always "Who will be Caesar?"

I think our best hope is for a set of technological changes that will
make power hard to exercise as freely as it now is exercised, and that
will bring people to look to other sources of income and moral
authority than the State.

Keir Martland: You've taken a great interest in the writings of
Epicurus, am I right? What makes Epicurus, who is relatively unknown
when compared to Plato and Aristotle, worthy of such interest for a
libertarian?

Sean Gabb: Big question. My best answer is to refer you to the essay I
wrote on Epicurus a few years ago. However, I will try to summarise
the argument. Epicurus rejected all attempts at a supernatural
legitimisation for the existing order, or for any reconstruction of
that order. Instead, he believed that a viable society could be made
up of free individuals contracting each to respect the lives and
property of all the others. Because of the catastrophic end of the
ancient world between the fifth and seventh centuries, most of the
relevant literature has not survived. We have in Lucretius a good
summary of his physics—which are an astonishing achievement in
themselves: a fully atomic hypothesis and a mechanistic universe. But
this was only his negative case, which was a denial of the
supernatural and the terrors that had been used to keep people under
control. His positive social and political agenda must be
reconstructed from short and often random sayings. But we do have
enough to say that, of all the ancient philosophers, Epicurus was the
closest to what we would call a libertarian.

Keir Martland: Indeed, the standard Greek philosophy might be
summarised as: man is a social animal, society is social, state is
society, and therefore we must be statists. Impeccable logic—I'd
expect nothing less of Aristotle—yet the definitions of 'society'
and 'state' are less than impeccable. Epicurus was a hedonist, was he
not?

Sean Gabb: Epicurus was accused in his own time of hedonism. In fact
his claim that we should seek happiness must be read in conjunction
with his definition of happiness as an absence of physical and moral
pain. He says:

"When we say... that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the
pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are
understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or wilful
misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body
and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of
drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment
of fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a
pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of
every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which
the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of this the
beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more
precious thing that even philosophy; from it springs all the other
virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living
wisely, honourably and justly; nor live wisely, honourably and justly
without living pleasantly."

Not much hedonism there!

Keir Martland: I see. This kind of misinterpretation is to be expected
a) when much of the literature is simply not available and b) when his
ethics lead to a case for liberty. In a debate some years ago on BBC
Scotland you made the case for legalising all drugs and similarly, in
another debate on the BBC, you have argued against the restrictions on
'drinking-hours'. These both clearly rested on the principle of
self-ownership. What is your preferred justification for the principle
of self-ownership and for another central principle to libertarianism,
homesteading?

Sean Gabb: I take a rather minimalist line. I have never accepted the
case for natural rights—not, at least without a God to legitimise
them. Utilitarianism in its usual variants simply talks about the
greatest happiness, without giving any reason why anyone should
believe in the greatest happiness principle. The best I can say is
that I desire that that people should be no more unhappy than is
unavoidable given the actual circumstances of their lives. Some kind
of libertarianism follows from this. If you don't care if others are
happy or unhappy, this argument will not touch you. However, most
people seem not to desire the general unhappiness of others.

Keir Martland: Let's say that libertarians, by whatever means, came to
power. Let's further suppose that you were the elected or selected
leader of the new government. What would follow?

Sean Gabb: It won't happen, but, if I did come to power, I'd shut down
as much of the administration as I could. I'd keep defence and
internal order and quite a lot of welfare—people do want this,
after all, and have legitimate expectations to its continuance. I'd
strip out all the agencies of oppression and bureaucracies that
support the PC elites that have come close to destroying us as a free
people. I cover this in some detail in my book
Cultural Revolution, Culture War. Of course, I do recommend this for a longer answer.

Keir Martland: Finally, would you say that the opinion moulders are
ultimately failing? With support for UKIP, with the election of MPs
who claim to be Austrian school economists, with Frank Turner singing
about how we should 'fight for what we own' and that we are 'sons of
liberty', with the general anger at the current politicians, would you
say that the British public is actually rather naturally reactionary?

Sean Gabb: Conservatives have been consoling themselves for as long as
I've been alive with talk of a "silent majority." If this does exist,
it's so far been very silent. I suspect that most people aren't happy
with the current state of affairs, and would put up with most
replacements of it. Sadly, most of these replacements don't look
notably libertarian.

As for our own attempts at moulding opinion, these have been
thoroughly incompetent. In many cases, supposedly free market
institutions are simply front organisations for special interest group
advancement—no names here! Or they bang on about symptoms rather
than causes. For example, I agree that the European Union is not
ultimately a good thing for liberty. We are in it, however, because we
are currently too decayed as a nation to get out. And, while not
ultimately good for liberty, it does a good occasional job of keeping
our own crazies under control. Without EU membership, we'd have
minimum pricing for alcohol, strict laws against porn, and probably
armed police buzzing all over the place in helicopters.

Oh, and coming to the election of supposedly libertarian MPs, I've
spent my entire adult life hearing about "sound" politicians who
turned out to be awful. I remember, for example, Barry Legge, a Tory
MP before 1997. He used to go about preaching the joys of the free
market and freedom in general. Then in 1996, he introduced a private
member's bill to make club owners criminally liable for drug taking in
the surrounding streets. Murray Rothbard once asked why our friends
never get anywhere in politics. His answer was that, once they get
anywhere, these people stop being our friends. Do not trust
politicians. They are there because they've been allowed in. The
filtering process is quite efficient. Mistakes may sometimes be made,
but the presumption must be that they happen very seldom.